Chapter Two

The rest of the week passed slowly as Nila and Sireno watched each other carefully for any signs of damage or illness, and Nila kept her search agents busy in the background watching for any news story or blip on the radar that would indicate the number of accidents was rising again. By Saturday afternoon she was itching to get back into Utopia, even if it meant she would miss another week’s tournament. Somehow the other games and even NetLife itself seemed diminished slightly, enough that she noticed the occasional slight lag and pixellation problem immediately, when before she would have brushed it off without a thought.

She waited until Sireno came home from grocery shopping and nearly pounced on him when he came through the door, neatly catching the bag he dropped in surprise. They put the groceries away together but Sireno put coffee on before she could drag him out into the living room, arching an eyebrow when she huffed in irritation.

“What’s your problem today? Did you take some uppers or something?” He looked down at the pair of mugs he’d set out and put one back in the cupboard. “You don’t need more of this.”

“No, I feel good. I just want to take on challenge number two. Get this party on the road.”

He eyed her, raising an eyebrow slightly. “Does anybody still actually say that? Chill, Ni. I’m not doing anything until I’ve had my coffee, and you’re not going there alone.”

“You’re not my mother.” She stuck her tongue out and ducked his swipe, laughing. “All right, fine. But hurry up.”

“My morning was fine, thanks for asking.”

“You’re a grump today. Grocery store full of screaming kids or something?”

“Screaming kids and someone grabbed my ass in a narrow aisle.”

“Normally you like having your ass grabbed.”

“Not when the only people in sight are 40-year-old soccer moms.” He filled up his mug with coffee and sniffed it appreciatively. “No wonder we spend so much time in VR.”

“Speaking of which...” She grinned at the look he gave her. “All right, fine. Did you eat lunch? Want a sandwich?”

“Sure. I bought some deli meat. It’s in the fridge.” Sireno sat at the table and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. Looking him over as she slapped together a couple of sandwiches, Nila noted that he looked tired, even for a Saturday where he’d fought his way through the weekend shopping crowds. She put his plate down in front of him and ruffled his hair before taking the seat opposite.

“You look tired,” she said in between bites of her ham sandwich. “Are you sleeping okay? It’s not Utopia-related, is it?”

“No.” He shrugged, licking mustard off his fingers. “It’s... I keep dreaming about Ricochet. Kisavo. Whatever the hell his name is.”

“Kinky.”

“Not even. That might actually be worth not getting enough sleep. I just...” He shrugged. “I dream about him and that stupid symbol. And I wonder where he is, what he’s doing.”

“You really need better taste in men, Reno.”

“Don’t make me throw my coffee cup at you.” He finished the last bite of his sandwich. “All right, let’s go see what Utopia has in store for us with challenge number two.”

Crowds filled Babel when they signed on, flowing back and forth in aimless patterns. Here and there avatars appeared and disappeared as people signed in and out of games, and as they walked down towards the Utopia tower, Nila spotted the purple giraffe again, striding by with its head held majestically high.

“Sometimes I wonder if that’s one of the devs,” she said, elbowing Sireno and nodding to the purple giraffe. “He’s always around.”

“They do have that thing with pink bunny ears.”

“All we need now is a blue hippo.” She started across the bridge towards Utopia’s doors but stopped when she noticed Sireno wasn’t following. “Hey, still okay?”

“Just thought I saw something for a minute.” He shook his head and gestured for her to keep walking, following her inside.

They were directed to a set of winding stairs that led up to the second floor and greeted at the top by a wooden door identical to the first, only with a number 2 inscribed on its front. Nila exchanged a glance with Sireno, then they both shrugged in unison, pushed the door open, and went inside.

She expected to be presented with a choice of avatars again but they stepped directly into an ornate sitting room lit at one end by a crackling fire. Antique chairs dotted the plush carpet and she saw portraits of ladies in high wigs and low-cut gowns on the walls. She glanced at Sireno and was startled to see him wearing a male avatar, and one that looked a lot like he did in real life, albeit with longer hair. He was staring back at her with wide eyes and when she looked at herself in a large oval mirror on the wall, she saw why.

As Sireno was wearing a male avatar, she was wearing a female one, her dark curls piled up high on her head and held there with a dazzling assortment of pins. Her dress was made of some sort of heavy material and she could feel at least three layers between the air and her skin. The avatar looked enough like her that she didn’t really have much to fill out the bodice of the gown, but it was cut low anyway, and she was wearing a necklace of gold links suspending what looked like an emerald, green to match the colour of her dress.

“Nice dress,” Sireno said after a few beats of silence.

“You shut up. You’re the one who’s supposed to be wearing skirts, not me.” She pulled them up and made her way somewhat uncertainly to the nearest chair. “Fuck me, I feel like I’m drowning in cloth. Help, my skirts are eating me.” She fixed him with a glare. “And why do you get a sword?”

“Because I’m the man and this is some sort of... medieval simulation, I guess.” He tugged at his blue tunic. “I’m more worried about how the system knows what we look like.”

“Access to our IDs somehow?” She tugged at the corset, though it was more comfortable than she’d ever though a corset could be. “Or it’s... using our own brainwaves or something.”

“Creepy and creepier.” He held up a hand at the sound of footsteps outside. “Someone’s coming.”

“Thanks, Sherlock,” she snapped, then straightened up and plastered on what she hoped was a convincing smile as the door opened and a pair of guards filed inside.

They looked around suspiciously before moving to stand on either side of the door, allowing in a woman dressed in so many layers of silk and fur that she looked fat, until Nila saw how skeletal her narrow face was. Her hair, blonde thinning to white, was pulled back so tightly it seemed to almost lift her thin lips away from her teeth, and she had dashed bright streaks of blush across her high cheekbones as though that would impart some natural colour to her pale skin. Her eyes were as green as the gem Nila wore around her neck and she raked them with a withering glance before sniffing and taking a seat in the chair nearest the fire.

“I suppose you were the best they could send on such short notice,” she said after looking them over a few moments more.

“That’s us,” Nila said and got a glare in return.

“If you could just point us on our way,” Sireno said.

The woman sniffed again. “You think your pitiful little sword there can take on a wyvern? I can see we’ll have yet more bodies to send back, if it leaves anything of your corpses. Do try and at least keep from bleeding all over the courtyard. It’s so hard to clean up.” She waved a hand to the guards. “Show our... guests to the armoury at least. Perhaps they’ll have the good sense to make use of it, or at least he will.” She fixed Nila with an unkind look. “Women have no place on the battlefield.”

Nila opened her mouth for a sarcastic retort but Sireno overrode her and offered her a hand up from her chair, using his grip to hurry her out of the room after one of the guards. Leaning in, he hissed, “Don’t piss people off, at least not until we’ve figured out what’s going on.”

“Sounds like we’re being sent to be wyvern chow,” she hissed back. “And I’m not even using a proper avatar. I can’t fight anything in this skirt.”

“We’ll find you some pants.” He slid his hand down to her elbow and flashed a smile at the guard, who had glanced back at them with one eyebrow raised.

They were left alone to pick through the impressive selection inside the armoury, though the guard stood waiting outside. Nila found a pair of pants, a chainmail shirt, and a pair of boots in a chest at the back, and with some maneuvering and Sireno’s amused help, she managed to change into them. Feeling much better in pants—and much lighter—she equipped herself with small knives and a longbow, then spent some time choosing the right arrows while Sireno tested out various weapons.

“Think I can hack us a rocket launcher?” she asked, examining a box of arrows marked with a fire symbol. “Boom, wyvern everywhere.”

“I think that might be noticeable, somehow.” Sireno carefully swung a mace. “It’s kind of weird, it feels like my body—well, my avatar knows what it’s doing with these things, even though I don’t. This is why I usually want to be a mage.”

“That and you like wearing skirts.”

“I enjoy a good breeze.” He exchanged the slim sword on his hip for a much bigger and heavier one. “A wyvern’s kind of harsh for only level two.”

“Maybe it’s a baby. A cute little thing with big eyes so we have good targets to aim for.” She slung a quiver of arrows onto her back.

“You and your maternal instincts.” Sireno took a last look around and swallowed visibly. “I guess... I guess this is as good as we’re going to get.”

“Relax, it’s a game. If we do get eaten, we’ll just have to try again. Maybe burn the whole maze to the ground next time.”

“Somehow I’m not encouraged,” Sireno muttered, following her out.

The guard took them on a long winding path through stone hallways decorated with intricate tapestries, until they came out in a side courtyard. High above a dark shape clung to the remains of an old stone tower and Nila thought it was some sort of gargoyle until it spread its wings wide enough to block out the sun. The guard pointed them towards the tower’s opening and the stone stairs inside, telling them they could climb up if they dared, then hurried back into the main building, leaving them alone in the cool air.

“I don’t think that’s a baby,” Nila said after a few moments of shading her eyes and looking up.

“Can’t imagine how you came to that conclusion.” Sireno gestured to the stairs. “So do we risk the stairs and a fireball in the face, or do we try to lure it down somehow?”

“Do wyverns breathe fire? I thought that was just dragons.”

“No, I think they both breathe fire and fly, but wyverns don’t have four legs.”

Nila opened her mouth to reply but the laundry line snap of great leathery wings backing air pulled her gaze back up. The wyvern was dropping towards them incredibly fast, hurtling downwards so hard the wind of it nearly knocked her off her feet. Sireno grabbed her wrist and yanked her into the shelter of an overhang only an instant before the wyvern made a grab for where she had been standing with its massive back feet. One claw skidded across the stone cobbles and tore a jagged tear in them as though they were nothing more than paper, then the wyvern flapped its wings and angled towards the far side of the courtyard, landing with a thump that shook bricks loose from the tower behind it.

It turned to face them fully, spreading its wings out and snaking its serpentine head from side to side. The effect was a little hypnotic and Nila didn’t realize it was gearing up to spit fire at them until its broad mouth yawned wide and she saw the first flicker of flame in its throat. As Sireno scrambled out of the way, she planted her feet, notched an arrow to her bow, and let fly straight down the wyvern’s throat.

The resulting explosion tossed her back off her feet and took out most of the tower behind the wyvern, burying its splayed remains under a pile of grey stones and dust. Nila picked herself up gingerly, her ears ringing, and vaguely wondered if she’d accidentally turned on her gear’s pain receptors. Her arm was bleeding where she’d landed on it when the wave of hot air knocked her to the ground and when she touched it she felt the sting of raw abraded skin. Halfway across the courtyard, Sireno was struggling to his feet, using his sword as a crutch until he could stand without wobbling.

“You have to admit, that was pretty fucking awesome,” she called to him, still a little breathless, her own voice sounding muffled in her ears.

He looked up with a smile that became a look of horror as a shadow fell across them. Nila tried awkwardly to turn, still off-balance, but something hard and heavy caught her in the back, sending her to her hands and knees. The pressure increased, knocking her flat, and held her there while something blew hot breath at the back of her neck, stinking of rotting meat and blood. She fought to take a breath, feeling the first sting of panic, and found she couldn’t. Her lungs began to protest for air and she desperately gave the emergency malfunction command to drop offline.

The air wavered around her for a moment then snapped back into the solid reality of the simulation with a harsh finality that would have made her sob if she’d had the breath for it. She was vaguely aware of Sireno trying to distract the creature’s—a wyvern, another one, she thought distantly—attention but the weight of its clawed foot stayed solidly on her back, crushing the remaining air out of her lungs. She tried the emergency disconnect again, but this time the air didn’t even waver.

I can’t get offline. The thought came through the haze with an odd clarity. I’m going to die here.